


Stalling, Falling

by kay_emm_gee



Series: third time is the charm [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 90210 AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4484507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke shows up at his door with red eyes, needing him, and though they aren’t friends (because that was the choice she made, he made) Bellamy can’t turn her away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stalling, Falling

She smells like paint and salt.

The large streaks of color on her face almost distract him from the barely detectable tear tracks marring her cheeks, but her red-rimmed eyes give her away. Flicking a sad excuse for a smile at him, she shifts uncomfortably. She is close to him, close enough that he can see the embarrassed flush rising up her neck. Her disheveled blonde hair can’t hide it, tucked up into a bun as it is. She doesn’t want to be here, a late-night visitor to his workroom, standing next to him and his boat, yet she is, right in front of him wearing an oversized flannel that he knows used to belong to her dad.

“Raven left for D.C. yesterday,” she says in a raw voice, her gaze dropping to the hole at the bottom hem that she is picking at. “And I don’t—no one else is around.”

“So you came to me?”

“I need a—a friend.” She trips over the last word, apology in her eyes as she guiltily lifts her head up to look at him.

He bites back a bitter huff, because she’s the one who walked away, the one who started seeing someone new. She’s also standing before him, holding back tears, in her dead dad’s shirt, something he knows she rarely puts on unless she needs that extra bit of melancholy comfort.

So he ignores the irony of her coming to him, her  _friend_ , and simply holds out the brush in his hand.

“Even strokes, thin coats, and don’t drip on the floor. It’s a pain in the ass to clean up.”

The painfully grateful smile she gives him nearly cracks his chest open, revealing his bleeding heart, and he knows then that he is well and truly fucked.

She sniffles as she grabs the brush and positions herself in front of an unfinished spot, getting to work. He joins her, but gets distracted as he watches her out of the corner of his eye, watches how her hands—which he knows are used to brushes and a canvas of a different sort, which have created masterpieces of color and texture and light—adapt quickly to this simple task, sure and steady. The corners of his mouth lift up amusedly at how seriously she takes it, her brow furrowing in concentration as she slathers on layer after layer of blandly white waterproof paint to the outside shell of his boat.  

“This is good,” he says after a while, as he peers down her teasingly. “I needed someone who could reach the lower sections.”

She crinkles her red nose at him and sticks out her tongue, but he doesn’t miss the way the sadness lifts from her eyes, which are a bit drier now.

“And you wonder why we’re not friends. You’re  _mean_ ,” she says softly, struggling futilely against a smile.

He laughs obligingly, even as he feels his chest constrict at the mention of that word again.  _Friends._

Before tonight, before she walked in, a mess of blonde hair and palpable sorrow, a mess he would gladly make his if she would let him, he would’ve fought against that word. Rejected it— _friends_ , his ass—vehemently.

Tonight, though, he would be her friend. Because she needed that, he could give that to her, at least until the sun came up.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr (kay-emm-gee)!


End file.
